• MrShankles@reddthat.com
    46·
    7 days ago

    I mentioned to my dad how much windows 11 sucks to use and he agreed that he can’t stand it

    So naturally, I told him about Linux, which he literally had never heard of before. I told him I’ll show him how to restore one of his old laptops with it, and he can go from there. Knowing him, I can’t wait to see “how cool” he thinks it is that he can just “fix” his own computer

    And I’ve already converted my wife, instead of buying a new MacBook cause hers is showing it’s age. She keeps her Mac for backup, but the main computer is Linux Mint. She’s even started to understand the terminal a little, even though she doesn’t really have to

    Slowly converting family and friends, simply because computers are expensive and windows sucks so hard now

    • ohshit604@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      33·
      7 days ago

      As another person had suggested, test with a live image first before installing it to an SSD/HDD, however Linux is very well maintained by the community and even if there aren’t native drivers from your hardwares manufacturer, for example Corsair Keyboard Drivers, there usually is Open Sourced alternatives for these things like CKB-Next.

      I say this to everyone, once you get a grasp on BASH (Bourne Again Shell) and package managers & repositories (edit: and the filesystem structure) you’ll essentially be able to use any Linux distro, it just comes down to the nitty gritty of things.

      • Hupf@feddit.org
        4·
        7 days ago

        I’d say that downloading drivers from the manufacturer is the absolute outlier and things working better with integrated open source drivers out of the box is the norm.

        Try before you buy download proprietary cruft.

      • Tonava@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        6 days ago

        edit: and the filesystem structure

        This is what I’ve definitely struggled the most with mint so far. It’s extremely difficult to find anything and I’ve needed to manually search for the file paths multiple times already, since I always manage to do something I need them for, and I haven’t gotten locate to work etc… Though this is probably just me being stoopid since I never find anything on windows either lmao

    • Illecors@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      15·
      7 days ago

      Yes. In general - it’s called live cd. Some distros ship with that in their installed image. {K,X,}ubuntu come to mind. Mint might do as well. You can boot into it and look around, see if basic stuff - network, audio, etc - works.

  • Alvaro@lemmy.world
    111·
    6 days ago

    That excitement is real 😂 Switching can be refreshing, but I always tell people to try it on a spare drive first. The best OS is the one that actually fits your workflow.

  • juipeltje@lemmy.world
    11·
    6 days ago

    Me when my friend started talking about how he wanted to buy a steam machine as his first entry into pc gaming, and considered installing linux on his laptop cause windows ran like ass on it.

  • enbiousenvy@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    12·
    7 days ago

    that particular combination of face expression and the top-down yellow lighting being the first thing I see when I open lemmy, I got jumpscared.

  • MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
    12·
    7 days ago

    If only there were a distro as lazy as using an Android device.
    Every time I mention this, someone comes along and mentions one or another distro, and then the caveats that keep it from being as lazy as using an Android device.

    • Urist@leminal.space
      51·
      7 days ago

      What exactly do you mean? Like a distro that just works well on a phone? Yeah proper Linux phones aren’t quite there yet.

      But any of the commonly recommended distros work out of the box on PC at this point, there’s less fiddling than with windows at this point in my experience

      • hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        7 days ago

        Things have gotten MUCH better than they ever have been.

        But unfortunately, it is still not as easy as just using an android phone.

        But then again, it’s a hard metric to judge by, because while some things are harder than they should be on Linux, other things are just… Different, than what people are used to (Windows, Mac).

        I use Linux, I use Android, but I still get frustrated when I need to use my wife’s iPhone for pretty much anything, because I’ve never owned one and I never use it. Does that mean iPhone is inherently bad design? Many people would argue no, it’s a good design in most cases. Just different. You’ve gotta learn the different ways of doing what you need to do. Although iPhone definitely has a few design flaws, in my opinion.

        Likewise with Linux. Many modern distros are very user friendly. But no matter how good it is, people will always struggle when starting for the first time, because many things are just plain different. And also there are design holes/flaws.

        You can say the same thing about any modern operating system you aren’t familiar with.

        My sister in law has a MacBook, and every time I need to use it, which is maybe once or twice a year, I struggle. Things aren’t where I expect them to be. Things don’t work the way I expect. Heck, some “standard” keyboard shortcuts are different. Does that mean it’s a bad operating system? No, I just need to put the time and effort in to learn it, if I wanted to use it daily.

        Linux has come a long way, and gets a bad rap. Yes it has a learning curve, and it might be more difficult because of all the different distros, but it’s pretty similar to everything else.

      • MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 days ago

        Yup. It’s getting closer, but not quite there. This is one of the things that AI could probably help with. Grabbing all drivers and solutions done and shared by everyone across different distributions and repositories, and putting together all the adjustments and final touches needed upon installation, obfuscating the process from the user. Something that a phone with specific components and characteristics doesn’t need, unlike a custom-made computer.

      • Owl@mander.xyz
        2·
        6 days ago

        What exactly do you mean? Like a distro that just works well on a phone? Yeah proper Linux phones aren’t quite there yet.

        I think they meant distros that are for desktop but as easy, convenient, simple, to use as android, ios or even maybe macos

      • blackbeards_bounty@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        3·
        7 days ago

        I think he means, Android runs Linux and doesn’t/can’t be tweaked for the most part. Because you don’t have root. So yes it’s opposite of what most Linux users seek, but it sure seems to be stable for years. So you can be lazy “admin’ing” it

      • bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        6 days ago

        Work out of the box with some asterisks.

        I did some distro hopping over the last couple of months and there were only a few that installed drivers and firmware for my Broadcom WiFi. Several had severe issues with Bluetooth audio. Keyboard backlight worked out of the box in less than half. Laptop speakers sound like crap without a lot of tweaking. Hardware acceleration for video doesn’t work out of the box on any distro I tried using the nouveau drivers for NVIDIA. Battery life is meh. No distro put the computer to sleep automatically on low battery by default. Websites can look like ass before installing Microsoft fonts. HDR support for screens is still limited.

        Depending on your hardware, you can be lucky, need additional configuration, and will have to accept some limitations.

    • glibg10b@lemmy.zip
      1·
      6 days ago

      Android needs the same sort of hardware-specific configuration that other distros need. It’s just that the phone manufacturer takes care of that for you

      • MithranArkanere@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 days ago

        I wouldn’t be lazy if I cared about how the cake is made. Wait, bad analogy. I do like cooking.

        But I hope you know what I mean. Have someone else do it. Have the user just install and plug things and they work, absolutely nothing else to be done, no need for research, asking a friend, wizards, troubleshooting tools, or tutorials.

        Lazy.

  • SayJess@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    121·
    7 days ago

    I’m such a nonconformist that I tell people Linux is terrible, and that they should never try it.

    • Billegh@lemmy.world
      4·
      7 days ago

      It really is terrible. And yet, somehow orders of magnitude better than most windows versions.

  • Elroc@lemmus.orgEnglish
    4·
    7 days ago

    Loving Mint but I really wish it was easier to integrate into AD/Exchange/O365 so I could replace all our work machines.

    • Thunderwolf@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 days ago

      There is some interoperability with windows domains for bigger distros like RHEL and Ubuntu (there are even Ubuntu specific admx templates iirc). Check out SSSD

    • johnnixon@lemmy.world
      2·
      7 days ago

      I still have a Windows VM for that case when the web version of office doesn’t do what I need. Work is all in on Microsoft.

  • jaschen306@sh.itjust.works
    21·
    6 days ago

    Cool, does anyone know how to hack it so my HDMI connector can actually hit 240hz? Apparently HDMI is a closed standard and only Windows/Mac has the license to go that high using HDMI.